Rush Limbaugh: Stephanopoulos 'Has Blown Himself Out of' Anchor Role

The credibility of ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos is now "tainted" by revelations he'd donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation from 2012 through 2014, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh says.

"Stephanopoulos was to be, for lack of a better term, the anchor of [ABC's] entire 2016 presidential campaign coverage," Limbaugh noted on his radio show.

"Stephanopoulos has blown himself out of the deal," Limbaugh asserts, adding, however, "I think ABC is gonna try to find any number of ways to get this guy… back involved in the 2016 campaign."

"He was the guy that was gonna do the debates. He was the guy that was gonna anchor all the coverage, Democrat and Republican. He was the guy that was gonna anchor all of the election night, all the campaign, he was it, and now he's jaundiced, now he's tainted."

Yet Limbaugh says no matter how hard the network tries "to rehab Stephanopoulos," the Clinton donations are only "half the story about his real involvement…"

Limbaugh points to a column by Peter Schweizer in USA Today in which it's reported that Stephanopolous had a "much deeper relationship with the Clinton Foundation."

Schwiezer writes that in 2006, Stephanopoulos was "a featured attendee and panel moderator" at at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative.

"He was right up there as an advocate, not just a donor," Limbaugh declares. "That's bad enough that he donated and didn't tell ABC. Well, he didn't come clean about its totality."

Limbaugh also lashes out at the notion Stephanopoulos worked hard to put behind him his work as a campaign aide and White House adviser to the administration of President Bill Clinton.

"He hasn't worked hard to put it behind him," Limbaugh says. "He'd worked hard to cover it up. He started out as a political hack."

"He was never a journalist, and then one day he's hired by ABC, and immediately by virtue of that alone became a journalist," Limbaugh adds. "And then for 18 years started working really hard on putting his hackery behind him," deriding his donation to the Clinton Foundation as "a temporary setback in working hard to putting his partisan past behind."

"My point is he never was a journalist, he never became a journalist, he's not a journalist now," Limbaugh says.

"ABC should be telling us, 'What [do] you mean, pull him off the debates? Hell, no, we're not gonna pull him off. I don't care if he said he's not gonna moderate. We're gonna put him in the debates. He's a journalist, he's worked hard for the past 18 years. 75 grand? … he didn't know. He's just trying to be nice to 'em. I mean, they gave him his first shot in politics. He's just being nice, that's all it was, maybe buying a little access, but he wasn't partisan.' That's the way they look at this."

Stephanopoulos has now apologized three times for the non-disclosure – one on "Good Morning America," one on "This Week," and another in a statement when the story first broke at Politico and the Washington Free Beacon, the Washington Post reports.

The credibility of ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos is now "tainted" by revelations he'd donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation from 2012 through 2014, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh says.